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It seems like the input/output box is favored by majority of the class.  However, for me, stimulus/response model is still fine.  Although I agree that input/output sounds more neutral and they add more complexity, I don’t have strong conviction to favor the input/output model yet. I think it is because I had been a strong believer who’s convinced that the function of the brain and behavior are solely based on chemical activity.  So, it is hard for me to abandon my old belief, the concept of stimulus/response.

                For example, our methodology of taking the swimming mechanism of the leech as a counterexample against the validity of spaghetti model  in class did not convince me much.  Removing the nervous system from the leech and using that nervous system to test the model seems not ‘neutral’ to me in its methodology.  I recall that Dickinson hints at us that the world is the construction of the brain.  But the brain in Dickinson’s poem is the organ still interconnected with other parts of our body still alive, ready to construct the world.  However, in the leech’s case, the nervous system is rather naked, and it seems meaningless to test the activity of the nervous system because it lost its meaning.  To me, the naked one taken out from the leech is not the nervous system any longer and thus not accurate subject to be tested on.  

                I just wanted to share that I am an example of a person who is still hanging in the middle of the two observations.  Honestly, I am afraid that I would have a trouble catching up the collective consciousness of the class due to my proclivity toward my old belief. But I will make every effort to think from different perspectives.  J